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A conspiracy-obsessed meathead neighbor of mine in my old neighborhood once insisted to me that the gummint was gonna use smart meters to forcibly reduce our electricity usage by shutting off our air conditioners at peak times. Yes, he was serious.

“A conspiracy-obsessed meathead neighbor of mine in my old neighborhood once insisted to me that the gummint was gonna use smart meters to forcibly reduce our electricity usage by shutting off our air conditioners at peak times. Yes, he was serious.”

You’re a little hard on your neighbor, considering what you’re saying he said is now possible by the “gummint”, it’s called shedding of consumption to avoid blackouts. We should perhaps listen to the “meatheads” who actually know more than we do sometimes. Not everyone is as unquestioning as you, Anse.

Unquestioning? Yeah, right. So let’s say for a moment that this is a legitimate plan. And why would the gummint put such a plan together? Well, we don’t limit our own consumption, and it causes blackouts. So take one, and you get folks getting no power at all. Take the other, and we all share a little bit of the burden. Does that sound as outrageously conspiratorial to you as it did to the meathead? Apparently it does. And I’m sure all of this will be enforced with black helicopter surveillance and warrantless wiretaps. Or, maybe a smart meter helps the Centerpoint monopoly more efficiently manage the services it provides, thereby reducing costs. Does questioning government mean being a paranoid nutjob? Apparently for some folks, it does.

Anse, your 1st post you were ridiculing your neighbor for saying that the smart meters would allow our power to be forcibly turned off. I was pointing out that your neighbor was correct.
The govt/those in power/those with a hidden agenda will always give the public a good reason/story to buy/pacifier to suckle for everything. Often those reasons are legit or partially legit and that’s enough for most to take the bait and go back to what they were doing. But that doesn’t necesarily mean that’s all that’s going on. Others have researched past deceptions and now no longer trust those folks and now seek the deeper reasons, and sometimes they might misfire in their zeal but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid/nutjobs/extremists like, coincidentally, the media/those protecting those in power and those in power often call them.
So I bristle when people like you try to appear so high and mighty by insulting those who question those who have lied to us in the past. With no disrespect meant to you, I hope one day you get to understand at least one example of such deception so that you might wake up a bit and no longer brandish your sword of ignorance and ego so freely.
By the way, do like in Douchebag Heights..jk, couldn’t resist.

Dana-X, i’d agree to some extent. People’s motivations and intents should always be questioned and studied(see starting a miserably failed war on ignored intelligence and false pretenses) but the gov’t is a vast network of different bodies that work in different ways. if we’re talking conspiracies, then yes bodies like the CIA that lack any public transparency and accountability should not be trusted, but to assume that every gov’t body, even those with full transparency and accountability, should be mistrusted is an absurd notion.

could the gov’t use smart meters to turn off our A/C’s, well it would certainly sound like more of a plan than a threat. we’re all familiar with the lack of investment in Texas smart grid so i actually do hope the gov’t would have plans on how to divert electrical resources to crucial elements of our economy, infrastructure and civic resources in the event of long-standing blackouts.

but in cases such as smart meters, where there is plenty of information abound for people to educate themselves on the positives and negatives and where the positives outweigh the negatives or any potential “consipracies”, then taking a stand against them can easily appear to be a selfish individualistic notion founded on a lack of knowledge.